Debunking Democrat dominance in the South

Debunking Democrat Dominance in the South: Could the three “restive” border provinces hold the key to success in the July 3 election?

Recent polls seem to confirm what everyone already knows about electoral politics in Southern Thailand: the Democrats dominate. The most recent Dusit poll (asking respondents which party they would vote for on the party list) indicates 76% of southerners support the Democrat party while 11% support Peua Thai. This holds consistent with the results of elections going back to the 1990s, but is there more to the story of voting patterns in Southern Thailand than overwhelming Democratic popularity? Is the South sufficiently homogenous to be treated usefully as a single analytical unit? The obvious answer to the second question is that there exists a sub-region along the Thai-Malay border with a markedly distinct political climate and history. Indeed, if we begin comparing patterns of voting in the three “restive” provinces of the Deep South with those of the rest of the South, clear differences emerge. These differences are of potentially significant consequence for the outcome of the current election.

The 2005 election

As a starting point, I looked at the historical distribution of votes for various parties across the South. The information regarding the 2005 general election available through the ECT website, however, does not disaggregate party list voting by region (party list voting was changed from a national tally to a 10 region system in the 2007 constitution). Instead, by tallying the votes cast for various candidates in the constituency elections according to party we can get some idea of the distribution party support.[1]

In 2005, 48 of the 50 constituency seats won in the south[2] went to Democrats, while one went to Chart Thai (Narathiwat) and one to Thai Rak Thai (Phang Nga) .The Democrats won 64% of the constituency votes across those 12 southern provinces while the TRT gained 28% (Mahachorn came third with 5.6%). These numbers take on a different character, however, when disaggregated between the three southern border provinces and the 9 remaining “others.” In 2005 the Democrats gained 67% of the constituency votes in the 9 “other” provinces of the South, but only 48.5% in Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala. Thai Rak Thai gained 28% of ballots cast in the 9 “other” provinces and 23% in the “restive 3”. Also of note, the Mahachorn party gained 19.4% of the vote in the three border provinces and only 2.3% in “the rest”. This suggest that, while the Democrats remained the most popular party in the Deep South as well as the South more generally, the picture of the total dominance in the South held less true in the Deep South than it did for the rest.

The 2007 election

Figures on the 2007 election made available through the ECT websites include party list voting disaggregated by region. For the Southern Region (see footnote 2) these figures show 80% of party list votes going to the Democrats and 8.3% going to the PPP (A further 4% were cast in favour of Peua Pandin). Of the 50 constituency MPs elected from this 12-province region, 43 were Democrats, 3 were Peua Pandin (Narathiwat 1, Pattani 2), 2 PPP (Narathiwat 1, Yala 1) and 2 Chart Thai (Narathiwat). Democrats gained 70% of the constituency votes across these three provinces (notably less than in the party list voting) while PPP gained 13% and Peua Pandin gained 8%. Ruam Jai Thai gained a further 6%.

Again, by disaggregating the data between the 3 restive border provinces and the remaining 9 southern provinces some interesting trends can be observed. In the 9 “other” southern provinces, the Democrats gained 78% of the constituency vote. In the 3 border provinces they gained only 36%. At the same time, the PPP gained 23% of the constituency vote in the 3 border provinces of the Deep South (identical to the TRT’s 2005 tally) while the democrats slipped to 10.5% of the vote in those provinces. Ruam Jai Thai gained 21% of the constituency vote in Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala, while only gaining 4% of the vote in the remaining 9 southern provinces. Again, these disaggregated figures indicate that the notion of Democrat dominance in the South does not hold for the provinces of Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala. Of course, in the case of the 2007 election this is rather more obvious as all seven of the non-democrat constituency MPs elected from the South came from districts in those three provinces.

The 2011 Election

Conventional wisdom on Thai electoral politics has it that the democrats “own” the South. To some extent, the figures from the 2005 and 2007 elections bear this out. But what a more nuanced look at the numbers also shows is a considerable divergence between the electoral preferences of the three troubled border provinces and the rest of the South. From Surath Thani to Songkla the Democrats are truly dominant. Further south from there, however, electoral politics is considerably more competitive. When Dusit, NIDA and, indeed, the ECT provide polls and election results at the aggregated level of “the South” this divergence is obscured and so too with it, the electoral significance of the Deep South.

Tomorrow’s election is widely predicted to be a vey close one, not so much in terms of who will win (it seems ever more likely Peua Thai will come out on top), but in terms of whether the winning party will gain enough seats to form a government. The three southern border provinces represent 12 constituency seats and competition for those seats is likely to be much more stiff than regionally aggregated polls indicate. It is conceivable that the ability of either the Peua Thai or the Democrats to form a coalition government after Sunday’s election could hinge on the outcome of constituency elections in Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala. Surely this would represent an unprecedented exercise of influence on national politics from these three provinces that have for so long been marginalized from the political consciousness of the nation.

All the figures upon which this analysis is based are available online at: http://www.ect.go.th/newweb/th/election/index4.php

[1] This is not an unproblematic approach: We can expect the numbers to skew in favour of large national parties like the TRT and Democrats which field candidates in every electoral district. As can be seen in the 2007 results, however, the percentage of votes gained by the large parties in the selection of constituency candidates was actually lower than what they received in the party list vote. A second concern is the obvious one that voters often select candidates based on criteria other than their party affiliation. I have as yet no methodological answer to that.

[2] For ease of comparison, I use the 12-province definition of the south used in the 2007 ECT election statistics. This excludes Chumporn, Prajuabkirikan and Ranong.

9 Responses

Good to see all this South vs Deep South detail broken down – but it does seem incomplete without reference to Phak Khwam Wang Mai (New Aspiration Party). Didn’t Chavalit’s NAP hold quite a handful of the southern Muslim seats from the 2001 election? When NAP joined Thaksin’s coalition, NAP was swallowed up by TRT.

My understanding is that, come the 2005 election, TRT (/NAP) were effectively “punished” for the 2004 Tak Bai incident – and presumably also for Thaksin’s badly misjudged policies in the Deep South. Those (effectively protest) constituency (and list?) votes had to go somewhere – and the Democrats seem to have been the main beneficiaries. Given a less than splendid history of Dem-led policy in the Deep South (or at least allowing ISOC & Co a free – and hard – hand), is it assured or even likely that those 2005 protest votes would again gravitate to them six years later?

I agree entirely that this analysis would be much more complete with the 2001 election included in it. The simple truth is that I could not find the figures. The info was not available through the ECT website and my web-searching did not turn it up. I know that one of Professor McCargo’s books includes a breakdown of the 2001 election in the Deep South, but I’m away from home and one can only travel with so many books!
Suffice it to say, you are correct the NAP held a number of seats in the Deep South after the 2001 election, the NAP did enter into a coalition with TRT and there was a precipitous decline in support for the NAP and TRT in the Deep South between 2001 and 2005, presumably in response to Tak Bai etc. In the 2005 election NAP garnered less than 1% of the votes in the Deep South and less than 0.1% in the rest of the South. As to whether and how much the Democrats benefited from this “protest vote”, I can’t say without looking at the 2001 results in detail. It is notable (as I mentioned above) that Mahachon (Great People’s Party) won over 19% of the constituency vote in the Deep South 2005, compared with just over 2% in the rest of the South.
If any of the knowledgeable NM readers can point me in the direction comprehensive 2001 election results, I would be happy to make a more complete analysis, especially once the results of the current election are made public.

It has long been known that the three Muslim-majority southern border provinces are not part of the Democrat-controlled South, so I’m afraid that you’re not busting any myths here. The 2005 election results were atypical, and the 2007 election result revealed a reversion to an earlier pattern of multiple party representation. The most optimistic estimates currently are that the Democrat Party will, at best, return 5 out of a total of 11 MPs for the 3 provinces.

The south is not so much ‘pro Democrat’ as they are ‘anti-Thaksin’. The Tak Bai massacre, the Kru Se Mosque massacre and his insulting comments about the separatists being ‘bandits’ (followed by the Narathiwat armoury raid reprisals and a major step up in the violence).

Fair points, all. The number of seats in question is, of course, 11, not 12. It’s equally true that I have not “busted any myths”, as my choice of the word “debunking” implies. I am aware that observers such as yourself, party strategists and local people in the Deep South recognize that Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala lie outside of the Democrat-controlled South, but I do feel that this fact is left out of most national level discussions and polls. My aim here was simply to highlight that fact.

Thanks, Doug, for a frank response. My earlier comment was intended constructively and I repeat that I found the comparison of South vs “Deep South” very useful – and very necessary.

It does seem to suit the Dem agenda to blur the distinction – claiming that the three provinces are politically “theirs” just as much as the ones to the north are; and also to suit a general Dem/Thai mindset that tries to avoid seeing the three provinces as in any way a “separate” entity.

As per c5, I don’t see those three provinces as being pro-Dem. Why would they be? It’s not as if the Dems have actually done anything progressive or even anything much that’s helpful for them. Abhisit ridiculed the proposal to expand industry there. The Oxford economics graduate seems blinded to the benefits that increased employment would bring. Cliche as it is, it’s worth remembering: “The devil makes work for idle hands to do”. Northern Ireland before and Gaza now – are there really not enough examples to teach this lesson?

For the far south, one of the biggest myths is that the Malay Muslim population is anti-Thaksin. Attitudes toward Thaksin and Puea Thai are far more nuanced than most reports recognize, which just goes to show how much researchers and journalists rely on preconceived assumptions about Malay Muslims rather than actually spending time talking with them.

One seemingly widespread view among Malay Muslims is that Thaksin is liked for his populist-like policies, but not for his “strong-fisted” approach (which he has recently admitted was a mistake). Many people feel that their economic situation was better under Thaksin, and for that reason they would like to see Peua Thai win this election. I have also met many people who praised Thaksin for his crack-down on drugs in the region; others have praised him without ever mentioning his strong-fisted approach.

I also have learned that there is a large section of people, especially among the intellectual classes, who respect Thaksin for rocking the foundations of “network monarchy.” Now, many Malay Muslims who have strong nationalist sentiments see a Peua Thai government as the only hope for pushing for political reforms. These folks look at the Democrat Party and see that it is not willing to offer anything in terms of political restructuring. The Dems just seem to want to improve the use of an archaic form of governance, the SBPAC.